


Shells on the Shore

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Loneliness, happier times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 23:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15982469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Alone, in the ruins of Racoon City, Lisa remembers. It wasn't always like this.





	Shells on the Shore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HostisHumaniGeneris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/gifts).



When she was little mommy and daddy had taken her to the beach.

The rocks were polished smooth as bone and there had been shells caught in them.

One of the shells had a little thing living in it.

Soft and slimy and it reached.

A snail, but by the sea.

Mommy said put it back in the water.

Daddy laughed.

She missed mommy and daddy laughing.

And the beach and the shells and home.

And the parties.

But not the party.

Not the last one at the last house.

The bad place.

I’m not too busy for you was what daddy had said. I miss you so much.

I miss you too daddy had been her reply.

Was always her reply.

Always.

He was sick when they got there.

Mommy got sick too and so did she.

Needles and men in white coats and pain that made her head blurry.

She was careful even though the men were gone now.

They’d been gone before.

Gone for a long long time but they’d come back.

They’d taken her away and hurt her and left her.

They’d taken mommy away.

But she’d found mommy.

Daddy too.

They were quiet and the smell was gone but she remembered.

She remembered their faces and gave them back.

And she hid.

Because she’d hidden before she knew all the best hiding places.

She was good at hiding.

She and daddy had played hide and seek in the houses he built.

He had taught her to read floorplans like a map.

She hid mommy and daddy away safe.

A hiding place where the bad men in white coats with their needles couldn’t get them.

They were quiet now.

Small and quiet and fragile.

Little lines like cracks in a china plate.

She’d dropped a plate once.

Daddy hadn’t gotten mad.

He’d found the glue and they’d fixed it.

Good as new he’d said.

But it wasn’t.

The crack was still there.

They didn’t talk so she’d trace the little lines with her fingers and try to remember.

Mommy laughing in the kitchen.

Mommy liked to bake.

Sometimes she tried to help, but she’d never been very good.

You don’t make the oven twice as hot when you double a recipe mommy had scolded.

Gently.

Mommy never yelled.

Not at her.

The fake mommy yelled when she realized.

Then she went quiet and still.

There had been a lot of yelling and noise.

Then a fire.

Worse than when she’d burnt the food in the oven.

She missed mommy’s cooking.

She tried, but she wasn’t as good.

And with no oven and sometimes no fire to cook it she had to eat it red.

She didn’t mind eating it red.

After the worst noise and the biggest fire food was hard to catch.

Until she realized that all the bad men were gone.

All of them.

Just her and mommy and daddy.

She looked in places and found food in cans.

One of them made her sick.

Back like when they’d come to the bad place for the party.

Daddy had built the bad place.

The bad place was gone now.

That made her feel safe.

Even if her place and her things were gone she felt safer with the bad place gone.

And with mommy and daddy safe.

Even if they were there she missed mommy and daddy sometimes.

When she got better she stopped eating the food from cans.

She found a new place and started collecting new things.

So many dolls and pretty, shiny little things.

Some she knew what they were, some she didn’t.

And in the winter when it snowed for the first time she would find a Christmas tree to decorate with all her most favorite treasures.

An angel on the top.

Sometimes she put mommy there because mommy was an angel now.

That made her cry.

But mommy was here and daddy too.

There, there, don’t cry. Daddy will come home soon, mommy had said.

So many times.

Look at this, daddy had said, showing her sketches and pictures that would be the places he built.

They’d gone to the beach when visiting a place he’d built.

Like a castle on a hill.

Daddy built a lot of places.

Like fairytale castles where a princess would sleep.

Then he built the bad place.

And it ate him.

And took mommy.

Just like a fairytale.

The bad place was gone.

Burned away to black and gray and dust.

And memories that work her up crying.

Bit by bit the memories came back.

She would write the good ones down when she woke up.

Lines and scribbles and loops across tattered paper.

And walls and whatever she could find when there was no paper.

She would keep little things to help her remember them.

Look at her diary and her things and remember.

A cracked cup, white and pink flowers instead of blue lace like she remembered.

But she remembered.

_“I think daddy would love it,” she said, looking up to her mother, eyes wide and hopeful, then back to the little tea set in the store window. She was little and the display was up high enough that she had to stand on her tiptoes to see it. “I think that’s exactly what he wants for father’s day.”_

_Her mother laughed though she didn’t know why at the time, “Alright, if you think he wants it that much.”_

_“I do,” she said earnestly, because the tea set was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It was impossible for her to imagine anyone not wanting it, not being thrilled to get it as a gift. In her mind it was the most perfect tea set ever and when she gave it to daddy they could sit down and have a tea party together. Just like she had with her dolls. Daddy always gave her dolls, for her birthday and for Christmas and they were lovely, but she wanted to have a tea party with him._

_Work kept him away, going to places, having meetings with important people. Sometimes she was able to come along with him, but most of the time it was just her and mommy._

_Time spent with daddy was special and deserved a special tea set._

_They would sit together in the garden at the little table daddy had built just for her and they would have tea._

_Mommy had understood and let her buy the tea set and when daddy came home, a week too late for father’s day, he was still thrilled with the gift. They went to the garden, even though it was cold out and sat out to drink tea together bundled up in in their coats and hats._

_There were other tea parties with daddy after that, not enough though._

_And far too many where it was just her and her dolls._

She had dolls now.

Not as nice as the ones that daddy gave her.

Then it had been two dolls a year.

One for Christmas and one for her birthday.

All of the dolls had names.

Gerald and Geraldine were the first.

She didn’t remember the names of the next ones.

There had been a Lenore though and an Eleanor.

They were sisters from different years because they looked so much alike.

Fair hair and porcelain skin and blue eyes that didn’t close even when you laid them down.

And so many more she didn’t remember the names of.

Now she had as many dolls as she could find.

And they all had names that she repeated each time she looked at them.

Tabitha and Jenny and Susie.

Green Eyes and Sally.

Gerald Junior and Jenny Again and Blue.

China Doll and Little Lenore.

So many dolls but none of them the ones that daddy had given her.

Memories came in bits and pieces like the broken shards of a dropped doll.

Or the fragments of a shell in the surf.

The lines her fingers traced when she held mommy and daddy.

After it rained the ash and black washed away and there were white bones in the burned buildings.

Like sticks of driftwood.

And shells washed up in the surf of a half remembered beach.

Skulls with no face or voice.

The people were gone.

Just like the snails whose shells she’d gathered in the memory of the beach.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do something very different with this piece. Hopefully it works.


End file.
